M.Ex Ep 2: Shiny Disco Satellites in Space

On the show Matt & Polly ask: should we be sending junk into space, even if they are giant disco balls and convertible roadsters? What can you do when software breaks your car and no one can fix it? And is your email provider a window into your soul?

Episode Transcript:


Matt
Hey Polly. I’m good. What have we got for everyone this week?

Polly
Well, Matt. Sometimes it can be a struggle to find the right stories but this week it’s been pretty easy. I’m really happy with what we have today.

We’re going to be talking about satellites and the new space start up industry.

You have a story about our dependence on software; whatever that means.

And finally, we'll be talking about hotmail, a technology that is making humans, obsolete.


Matt
Thanks Polly. We’ll be hearing more from Polly later in the show. After the break, I’ll be coming at you with the giant disco ball from space. Here on MX.









Show
MEX0002
Jan. 26, 18
Segment
1

Item
Shiny Disco Satellites
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/26/space-graffiti-astronomers-angry-over-launch-of-fake-star-into-sky?CMP=share_btn_link



I really don’t know what to think about this next story. Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away with the shininess of new technology and forget all those old homilies like all that glitters is not gold. Or in this case, all that glitters is not silver.

The story itself is quite a nice one about national pride earlier this month the company in New Zealand called rocket lab launched a rocket into space. It had a payload of the usual commercial satellites and it was a big deal for the country, marking a successful first foray into the space business.

They’ve since come under a lot of criticism for including a large geodesic sphere amongst the cargo.

As I said I’m a little bit unsure about this story. On the face of it it’s quite cool, the sphere is called the humanity start, it’s about a metre across, it’s made out of carbon fibre and it’s designed to reflect light. And they’ve let it out into whatever part of the outer atmosphere it is that satellites inhabit.

So in effect it’s an artificial star. Which gets everyone’s Star Wars fantasies excited, even though it’s not a death Star. It has been designed to reflect so much light that it will be the brightest star visible in the night sky for the next nine months until its orbit finally decays and breaks up.

As I said the idea of having a giant disco ball in space is a pretty cool one and maybe one that can get the international space station going into party mode.

The problem with stories like this is that they really don’t stand up to closer scrutiny. Astronomers are up in arms because they’re already struggling with light pollution. And while they acknowledge that one little sphere won’t make a huge amount of difference, it sets a precedent for sending other silly things into space.Which is really something we have to avoid. There has been an explosion in Space tech start-ups over the last five years. There is so much investor money going into the field that it’s in danger of creating the classic tech bubble. It’s quite astonishing that companies are being founded on the basis of building satellites and paying for them to be delivered into space despite having no clear idea of what they’re going to be for and if they’re ever going to earn their money back.

It’s like we’re back in the early days of the.com boom. the Ethos is very much building first and find an audience later. The area of space surrounding our planet is already incredibly conges